Seeing my interest in Team of Rivals about the Lincoln presidency, Heather bought me Grant and Sherman: The Friendship that Won the Civil War. This was a very interesting book about two men and the war that brought them together. (more…)
I was intrigued by the quotes from Eisenhower that I found while writing a previous post, and I decided I needed to learn more about this man. So I picked up the one-volume biography by Stephen E. Ambrose, an abridgment of his original two-volume work. (more…)
In the middle of reading Eisenhower: Soldier and President by Stephen E. Ambrose, I saw in the video store a picture of Eisenhower on a documentary called Why We Fight. It was the Grand Jury Prize Winner at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
The movie’s launch-pad is Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell speech in which he warns America of a military-industrial complex and draws that concept out to the current war in Iraq. (more…)
Saturday Heather and I watched The Great Debaters, a show produced by Oprah Winfrey and directed by Denzel Washington based on the actual 1935 debate team from then-exclusively black Wiley College in east Texas who did so well locally and regionally that they were eventually invited to debate against Harvard in Cambridge. How much of it is true I don’t know, but the story is compelling, the acting is good, and the message is very important.
It made me think about a lot of things, among them: (more…)
Last night I watched Sicko, Michael Moore’s film about the U.S. healthcare system. I’ll give you some time . . .OK, now that you’ve recovered from the mention of the hated film-maker, can we move on? It was a movie that was disturbing, revealing, compelling, funny, infuriating, pandering, provocative, silly, and meaningful all at once. (more…)
I just finished one of the best books I have ever read–Team of Rivals: the Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I was turned on to Lincoln by a short business book called Lincoln on Leadership from which I learned a little of his management genius. So I decided to take the leap and tackle the 750 ppg. (not counting the works cited section) book. I have a new hero. (more…)
Barack Obama has struck a chord with Americans in his latest book, The Audacity of Hope. The first thing he does is admit that politics is a rotten game, although he says that most politicians are not the evil people we think they are.
The second thing he does is lay open the biggest issues of our day—not like Rush Limbaugh or Michael Moore would do it, with an agenda of polarization—but rather in an attempt at revealing the complexity of the issues and thereby making us realize that there are no easy answers. He explores the pros and cons of both sides, openly states which he prefers and why, and leaves an opening for others to disagree. (more…)
Madeleine Albright’s The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflection on America, God, and World Affairs is an exploration of the interplay of religion and politics and how, as much as anyone may try to prevent or deny it, they are inextricably linked. She tells of how at the end of the Cold War, many in the field of international relations (herself included) thought things were going to get a lot easier. However, they did not recognize the patterns emerging in the Balkans, Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Chechnya, Latin America and the U.S. of religious revival, tension, and strife. The 9/11 attacks in the U.S., killings in Madrid, London, Amman, and in retrospect, Srebrenica, Addis Ababa, and a dozen other cities, have brought the reality of the religious aspects of politics into stark relief and have given us a pessimistic view of the future. (more…)
The day after seeing Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, I was talking to a friend about it. He countered with Michael Crichton’s recent book, The State of Fear, a work of fiction that puts forth the assertion that global warming is a farce being played on the public by environmental extremists, and my friend was pretty convinced by this book. My question for him was, “Are we going to wait until global warming is proved true to try to stop it?” It seems to have a very long braking distance; if we ignore the brake lights and wait until we see the wreck to begin slowing down, we’re going to be in a mess. (more…)